California San Fernando Mission

Van Nuys Week 3

Mason got to skype us on Mothers Day! It was amazing to talk to him for 45 minutes. He looks great and sounds so happy! I posted the picture of him talking to us. He had headphones on so he could hear us better! Swee-eet.

Friends and Fam,

Woah. Where did the week go? Seems like I was just typing away on this computer an hour ago. Truly the phrase “time flies when you’re having fun” applies here. It seems like we did so much stuff in so little time. I feel like there’s never enough time to do everything you want to as a missionary! But as such is the struggle. Here’s a run-down of the week.

The first eventful thing of the week was Mission Leadership Council on Wednesday. Basically it’s a meeting with all the zone leaders and sister training leaders (both English and Spanish) in the whole meeting. President Hall and the assistants gave us some training, this time everything focused on the Book of Mormon. I love the Book of Mormon! As we focused on it throughout the meeting I came to realize the power it truly has. Plus President blew my mind a couple times too, so that’s always good. Example: let’s examine the title page of the Book of Mormon. In the last paragraph it says the following:

“Which is to show unto the remnant of the house of Israel what great things the Lord hath done for their fathers; and that they may know the covenants of the Lord, that they are not cast off forever—And also to the convincing of the Jew and Gentile that Jesus is the Christ“

I italicized the two important parts there. So the purpose of the Book of Mormon is to convince everyone that Jesus is the Christ, or the Savior of the world, and also to teach us the covenants, or promises, we have to make to return to God’s presence. President Hall compared that to our missionary purpose:

“Invite others to come unto Christ by helping them receive the restored gospel through faith in Jesus Christ‍ and His Atonement, repentance, baptism, receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost, and enduring to the end.”

Aren’t those essentially the exact same purpose? I was so mind blown when I put those two things together. The Book of Mormon was truly written for our day, for all the missionaries throughout the world. So we should probably use it!

After the meeting on Wednesday we spent most of Thursday planning for our Zone Training Meeting we were to give that same Friday. It was fairly easy because we basically followed the same model as President in Mission Leadership Council. Our main focus during the training was to “Flood the Valleys With the Book of Mormon”. Everyone got super stoked once we finished training and even that same day we saw tons of miracles using the Book of Mormon in finding, teaching, everything. We even made the focus a little rallying cry haha. Flood the Valleys (Flood the Valleys!). So great. The Book of Mormon is so great.

This week we also spent a lot of time at service projects, two of which were at local food banks. The first one had us sorting out donated drinks into boxes. It was pretty nasty haha because lots of the donated glass bottles of juice had been broken, with pieces of glass and stickiness everywhere. Then the other was just on Saturday. All of the local mail carriers were picking up bags of donated food and our job was to unload the trucks and sort it all out also. Tons of fun and the whole zone showed up. Community Service!

That just about wraps it up. In the small amount of time we have to be have to be normal missionaries we basically spend just getting out there and talking to people. Hardly any of our investigators are progressing still which is rough, but I feel like nothing but good things are to come. Hope everyone had a great Mother’s Day! My favorite mom scripture from the Book of Mormon is Alma 56:47-48. We got to share that with a couple people yesterday which was cool. Look it up, it’s pretty good. Also, skyping the fam yesterday was pretty great too. Plus I finally got some sports updates (thanks Kolbs). 🙂 Have a great week everyone! Go Rockets.